How do you know if your premise is outdated?
How do you know if your premise is outdated?
How do you know if your premise is outdated?
The premise is the concept that drives the plot. That canHow do you know if your premise is outdated?
The premise is the concept that drives the plot. That can
never be outdated. I'm not even convinced that a concept
can be overused when used well.
Okay, it's been scientifically disproven but then “time travel” isSure can! A modern film that hinges on disproven theories.
That could be called science fiction rather than bad science.In fact, I'd love to see someone make a good film out of really bad science. Like the sun revolving around a flat Earth!
A dated premise - a biography about the good guy Bill Cosby?
That's what I would say. Let's take the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (one of my favorites). All the forward thinking views of the internet are fanciful and not exactly how things worked as technology developed. But given when it was written, it's forgivable and not really all that distracting. However, a lot of the plot revolves around an outdated translation of an old sumerian text (and sumerian writing in general). It worked with the interpretation of the writings in the early 90s, but by the early 2000s it was thoroughly disproven. So that is dated, and depending on how much you know about Sumeria, a little distracting. But I still love it.Or is the key word
here "disproven"? Unproven is not dated, disproven is dated?
Put me in that camp, too. I agree that specific elements can be dated.Interesting question. I agree with both sides (Con: Directorik, TrueIndie) that a genre or plot cannot be dated and (Pro: JoshL) that certain elements can be wrong pulling me out of the story.
True though the premise is the Temple's spunkiness brings about the eventual reconciliation between her mother and grandfather. (The father was a goldminer who sent them back to live with his father-in-law who had disowned his wife.) I agree that premise of kids reconciling family members is a universal one with many variations. My comment was about the treatment not the premise.Put me in that camp, too. I agree that specific elements can be dated.
The premise of “The Little Colonel” is not “precocious, freckled white
girl sings and dances with happy black servant”. The premise is the
reconciliation of a father and daughter – a premise that is not dated.
That could be done today. Set it in the years directly after the Civil
War and you'll have problems with political correctness but not with
the promise. Set it in 2015 with a father coming home after many
years in the Mid East theater and the premise comes alive again.
I agree with this. Bones are bones. I also believe the delivery or treatment of a concept can be perceived as 'dated'. While wooly mammoths have similar bone structures to elephants, if brought to life, they would need special accommodations because of their tusks and fur. Cutting their tusks and shaving their fur to make them "fit in" with other elephants just parodies the original. Each needs to be treated similar to its native setting. And that's not always possible.The more we discuss this the more I believe that a premise or concept cannot be dated.
"Before the hero can thwart his nefarious plans a villain ties a damsel in distress to the railroad tracks" or "Fauna meets atomic radiation/waste and grows to mega proportions, wreaking havoc upon a major city"